British Interwar Women Writers : Class, Gender, Genre

Uncovers the intimate connections that existed between interwar women writers’ political affiliations and their aesthetic decisions.

British Interwar Women Writers explores the relationship between the political and literary commitments of five women writers – Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ellen Wilkinson, Rosamond Lehmann, Elizabeth Bowen and Amabel Williams-Ellis. The book has two aims. Firstly, to offer more precisely contextualised accounts of these writers’ class and gender politics by situating their treatment of maternity, marriage, work, sex and domesticity in terms of contemporary socio-political debates, as well as their own involvement with organisations like the Labour Party, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Secondly, by focusing on their shared preference for mid-and-low-status genres, such as romance and thrillers, and exploring the potential of cross-generic close readings, the book shows how these writers’ work with genre was responsive to, and in some cases contiguous with, their extra-literary commitments and political engagements.